Q: I was out shopping over the weekend, and
I noticed that one of the home centers still had some bins full of bulbs marked
down to 50 percent off. Are these still good to plant? I'm also wondering, how
comes bulbs get planted in fall instead of spring?

A:
We're past the ideal bulb-planting time now, but that doesn't mean those
left-over bulbs won't grow, sprout and bloom.

First, make sure they're still dense and
fleshy. If they're noticeably dry or lighter in weight than normal, they're
goners.

Most of the ones I've seen in late November
to early December are still viable. With bulbs, little live plants are inside
the fleshy part. Cut one open sometime and see what you find in there.

You can get some good bulb bargains this time
of year, but it's important that you get them in the ground ASAP, give them a
good watering, and ideally, cover the bed with an inch or two of bark, wood
chips or leaf mulch.

The reason spring-blooming bulbs get planted
in fall is because that's when their biological clocks start ticking for the
next season's performance.

They put down roots in fall and then
accumulate the proper chilling time over winter before the bloom cycle is
triggered when the days lengthen and the soil warms.

If you wait too long to plant bulbs in fall,
the soil is too cold to allow sufficient root growth. What often happens is
that the flower stalks end up much shorter than usual, and bloom times are
later and more compressed – if you get anything.

I've planted as late as the first week of
January one year and got a fairly decent showing of tulips that spring.

The three main hurdles of late planting are:
1.) the soil's too cold to allow necessary fall root growth; 2.) the bulbs have
dried out and died (probably from less-than-ideal storage), and 3.) the ground
is frozen and you can't even dig the holes.

In central Pennsylvania, the perfect
bulb-planting time is end of September through October.